4-16-12 Fox Reading Conference Call

We covered just one paragraph from Sermon 2 in, "That Thy Candles May Always Be Burning."

I would not say we wandered off topic, but we touched on the subject of "being renewed up into the image of God." What did Fox mean by the statement "So now come up to the state before the Fall. Here is the wisdom of God, so in his wisdom to order all things to his glory and honor. Here is the top, and Christ set above all, and God hath made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6) in him who is our righteousness." How does this tie into the early Quaker conception of salvation? How does the early Quaker concept of salvation differ from a typical evangelical or fundamental concept of salvation? Again we dipped into Edward Burrough's preface to vol. 3 of Fox's works and other excerpts of Fox's writing.

You may wonder that I don't answer the above questions in this brief report. Someday I may be required to give those answers. I hope on that day Christ gives me the wisdom to answer in a way that brings clarity and not confusion. Yet it resolves in this, "So one to inform another that so all may be preserved in virtue and holiness, and all childish things that become not modesty and sobriety and Godliness be laid away, and that be set up whereby God may be honored and that you may feel him in you ordering your minds, hearts, and souls." (That Thy Candles May Always Be Burning, p. 37)

Ellis Hein